


Justify My Love

by further



Category: Justified
Genre: Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:57:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/further/pseuds/further
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What makes Harlan so darlin'?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Justify My Love

Let us just pull over a minute and contemplate the layers of Justified. Frankly, there's a lot going on here. It takes a special intelligence to accurately portray the ways of the stupid. And an even smarter smarts to create a realistic look at countrified genius. Urban dramas... well, let's just say that the concept of the big bad city is very much an examined item in American pop culture. Which makes sense if a person is involved in the culture industry and lazy. After all, you look out your studio or office and there's a city right there. It is not a long haul trek to discover the concrete jungle and the proverbial thousand stories therein. 

But to step out of that easy reach and wind one's way around the mysterious rural climes, those vast oceans of land and life that surround cities on all sides; that takes something one step beyond.

I am certainly not discounting the fascinating ins and outs of urban life and its chaos, its complexities, its ever changing yet eternal character. There are traditions and local heroes and legends on the boulevard just as there are in a holler or bayou. But far more often in pop culture we see country life in a caricature rather than as something with character. And I don't just mean those portrayals that are openly gawky with redneck ironies. Even the beloved, corn-fed, wholesome ideal of rural living kinda makes me feel off-set.

But Justified is one of those rare finds that zooms in for the close-up and allows the details to bleed convincingly through the more obvious facade of southern fried mythos. What's more, this series invokes all those well-worn eccentricities and other gothic conceits. In the careful, clever handling of Justified, these Dixified cliches are able to add depth. The high drama of Hollywood's hillbilly has, after all, been subverted into the real life culture of rural America. Even hayseeds can get a satellite dish and see the way the mass media so carelessly doodles them on screen. And just as in urban life, folks tend to embrace and ham that up now and then.

Beyond that, though, what gives Justified its almost unnameable gravity is a combination of the ridiculous and sublime. The suburban and urban lampooning of Down Home is a shimmer across the surface of things in Harlan County. But Justified smoothly sinks into the idiosyncratic and matter-of-fact soul of southern irony. There is far more afoot than a cast and characters who toss the yahoo factor back at the larger viewing world. There is the kind of depth and detail, a knowing and nuance that can only come from savvy and some degree of familiarity. The south of Justified is known by its creators rather than guessed at, imagined or joked about. Even when it's funny- because I consider this series just as much a dark comedy as a drama/action type thing.

It takes something special to see what is really true about a place and its peoples; but it takes heart and genius to be able to turn around and recreate that truth so it can be seen and understood by those who are strangers. That's what keeps me fixated. There is a genuine feel of the real here. That's what allows Justified to transcend its roots without compromising them. No small feat, y'all.


End file.
